Breaking mews: Cats hog museum spaces

With the Internet bursting with cat love, it might have been hard to ignore the global merriment over International Cat Day yesterday (Monday). However, only last week, it was ‘Breaking Mews’ for culture and art lovers as the world – including the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, which has in the past years – celebrated what is now known as Museum Cats Day.
Trending famously through the day with the hashtag #museumcats, July 30 is dedicated to showcasing, on social networking sites like Twitter and Instagram, cat-related art and artefacts in museums worldwide. Museums from far and wide put the focus on cats of all sorts and across mediums in their collections.
From the 18th century Bristol Delftware tile from @bristolmuseum to a portrait of a child with a cat, which went missing from Paris’ Musée Cognacq-Jay@museecj during World War 2; the gathering of culture-centric cats was fascinating.
It’s well known how cats are Internet’s darlings and the web is full of them – funny cat videos, cute cat pictures and GIFs, cat memes, cat cartoons, you name it – and cat facts such as the following were shared on Monday, World Cat Day, at will: Cats sleep for almost 70 per cent of their lives; spending anywhere between 13 and 16 hours of the day asleep, or that a cat’s heart beats twice or thrice as faster as a human’s.
With cat lovers, or ailurophiles, known to take a special interest in cat-related art in museums, a Twitter account dedicated to celebrating all things cats and collections, @CuratorialCats happens to be the home of hashtags such as #MuseumCats and #MewseumMonday.
In celebration of the hashtag, Canterbury Museums shared a post about ‘Mummified Cat’, which can be found in the museum’s Ancient Egypt, Explorers and Collectors, The Beaney section. In Ancient Egypt, mummification was not limited to humans, explains the post, as from snakes and beetles to hippos and crocodiles, the Ancient Egyptians mummified all sorts of different creatures. Cats, being sacred, were not excluded from this.
“Many cats were mummified in the city of Bubastis, the centre of worship of the cat goddess, and then buried in special cat cemeteries,” the post says, “This mummified cat, whose face can still be seen, would have had its insides removed and filled with earth or sand before being wrapped in bandages soaked in natron (salt) or resin.
The cat’s front legs were laid by its side, and its back legs tucked up against its tummy. Bandages have been removed from the cat’s nose and mouth, but you can still see its sharp teeth, fur and whiskers.” Interestingly, during Victorian times some 300,000 mummified cats were shipped to Liverpool for use as fertiliser.
Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) has previously participated in the celebration by tweeting and posting its own enviable feline collection. MIA had shared some paw-some works like an illustration of a leaping leopard from the Marvels of Creation & the Oddities of Existence, Yemen, 16th or 17th CE, and a fritware ceramic dish from Turkey with underglaze painting of a chained leopard, dating back to 1600-1610.
The occasion had turned out to be a good opportunity to flaunt the range of MIA’s collection. A bronze oil lamp from 12th Century Iran, a bronze tap from 11th Century Egypt, an ewer in the form of a cat on a fritware piece from Iran, circa 1200, a 17th Century bronze ewer from India, a bronze zoomorphic figurine with copper inlay from 12th Century Iran, and a bronze incense burner in the former of a lion from 12th Century Iran or Central Asia, were some of the objects that MIA had pitched in with.
A fascinating place that professes its true love for cats is The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. The museum has a spectacular history of treating cats like treasured guardians, and even today, the army of felines keeps the basement free of mice and rats.
To honour them, the museum holds an annual day of the Hermitage cat, and several top cats have been captured in rich photographic portraits wearing the cool attire of imperial court servants. Last week, much to the delight of cat lovers, The State Hermitage tweeted, “Hermitage cats into a virtual reality soon! A special video is being prepared in the 360 degree format.”